A baby is what’s brought them to Australia, Mr and Mrs Prem Singh, from a small farming village town in the north of India. Neither of them had flown before. Neither of them, as a matter of fact, had ventured too far outside the village precincts. A farmer’s life is lived, after all, round the clock, watching the seasons, waiting on the weather to dictate his economic status year after year. The paddy fields are greenest when it rains down at the right time and the sun is abundant when necessary.
For all his working life, Prem has been under the control of the elements, and they have, mercifully, been good to him and his family. The one thing he knows how to do expertly, is to leave things in the hands of fate. His philosophy has been conditioned by experience — that Nature ultimately is the great decider.
So when the news arrives that their daughter, Padma, is having her first baby in Sydney, and his wife asks from the kitchen in their little home, “What will we do?” he can only reply, “We will get there somehow, don’t worry.”
And they do, arriving in the seventh month of Padma’s pregnancy, having left the fields in the care of a reliable nephew. Initially, their son-in-law, Gautam, was going to fly all the way out to India and escort them to Sydney, but that was deemed unadvisedly expensive, especially with a baby on the way. But the nephew’s younger brother who worked in the big city, came and took them all the way to the airport and saw them through baggage control. Left on their own from that point, things could have turned out more daunting than imagined, but they met one helpful airline employee who recognised in them their ‘first-time-flyer’ distress and took control of the entire situation, including having them met at Singapore and transferred to their rightful connection.
By the time they disembarked in Sydney, they more or less knew the routine, even if they didn’t understand a word of what they were being asked at passport control and all transactions had to be carried out more or less by gesture. And then Gautam was there to meet them at arrivals, his big car waiting outside.
“Mum was a total wreck,” says Padma, laughing, now in her eighth month. “But look at my father! So calm you’d think he flies to Australia and back every week!”
Neither mother nor father know what is being said, but they do know they are the subjects of those comments. Each gives a half-knowing smile and Padma rushes to tell them in their own tongue what she’s just said. Her father says something in return and she laughs before translating, “He’s lonely here, already! In this big country. I mean he didn’t say that exactly, but I can tell. He’s missing his routine. He just said, ‘If I was at home at this time I’d be out in the sun driving the tractor’.”
Her father says something again. Padma translates: “He says the weather is perfect back home for ploughing.” She laughs and adds: “Father’s only physically present here. Mind is left back in India.”
Gautam, who gets me to himself later, says: “I feel sorry for them sometimes. They are so out of place. Like fish out of water. And very lonely. They miss their friends. They miss their own setting. When both of us go to work during the day, they are totally lost. Her father goes wandering around the shopping mall and her mother washes clothes when she’s not cooking for everyone. But ask them how they are feeling and they’ll both say they are very happy, very happy.” He sighs, adding: “Sometimes the things people have to put up with just to keep tradition alive. It can be cruel.”
Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.
